


The Kassandraia

by Hokuto



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology, The Oresteia - Aeschylus
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canonical Character Death, Dark, F/F, Happy Ending, Present Tense, Recovery, Supernatural Elements, Trauma, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-05
Updated: 2012-02-05
Packaged: 2017-10-30 15:26:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/333202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hokuto/pseuds/Hokuto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is only one murder in the bath at Mycenae, and from it something more than friendship grows.</p><p>Contains: murder, mention of rape and sexual harassment.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Kassandraia

**Prologou**

The watchman yawns as he stares out into the dark, across the sea. For a year now he has made the climb up to the palace's roof every night, as Philippos did for two years before him, and old Glaukos for two years before Philippos, and the boy Teleus first, who had watched for nearly five years and become a man grown and then slipped coming down one early morning and broken his beautiful neck.

Close to ten years they'd been watching for any sign from the army, and the unhappy lot for the latest shift had come to him, leaping into his hand like a bird eager to be sacrificed. He misses the comfort of his own bed, his wife's quiet laughter and warm companionship, the chattering of his growing children - they must be quiet now during the day, when he sleeps. But it is the queen's order, that the night watch from the roof must be kept, and there is no one in the palace now who would dare to defy the queen; so he sits on the rooftop, yawning under the starlight and dreaming of the sun. He has grown tired of the stars, and the baleful light of Ares hanging in the East he hates most of all. He stares into its red glare, hating it, praying to every other god that it will vanish.

It does.

From the peak of a little mountain island an hour's row from the shore flames leap up, shining and golden, swallowing the red star whole. The watchman jumps up himself, blinking and rubbing his eyes, but the beacon-fire remains lit.

He almost breaks his neck like Teleus, tumbling down the ladder in his haste to bring the news to the queen:

The long war has ended. Our king is coming home.

**Klytaimestra**  


The king steps down from his chariot and onto the purple garments laid before the door, and the queen smiles.

“Welcome home, my husband.”

He says, “See to her, will you? She was a valuable catch - the most noble prize the army had for me - and I want her welcomed well into the household.”

“All things will be as you command, now that you have returned,” says the queen, and Agamemnon disappears through the stone gate, calling for a bath.

Klytaimestra turns to the girl shivering on the path, the smile gone from her narrow face; her dark eyes take note of every inch of conquered finery wrapped around bruised skin, each golden chain claiming the girl’s curved limbs and full body.

“Come into the house, then,” she says, “you will be treated no worse here than elsewhere, and perhaps better; we are not cruel to slaves, like some newly wealthy men.”

Kassandra says nothing, moves not at all.

“Do you speak no Greek, then?” the queen asks. “Make some sign, if you understand.”

Kassandra says nothing, moves not at all.

“Enter or not, as you will; the guards will see that you do not run away,” Klytaimestra says, her voice deep and harsh, and she goes into the palace alone, treading carelessly on the dark silks.

Kassandra falls to her knees, weeping and calling out, tearing away her garlands; but the old guards cannot understand her words of blood and death.

* * *

Caught in a purple net, Agamemnon’s might has no meaning, his struggles win him no valor-prizes, and he shrieks like a little animal dying in the night.

The queen brings the axe down once, twice, deliberate and precise, and blood drapes her in its own net. Kassandra is scrabbling away, scraping her feet and palms on the rough stones of the bath, trying to pull together the remains of her clothes where Agamemnon tore them, crying like the swallow with no meaning.

Klytaimestra raises the axe again and pauses, studying the scene before her. Kassandra stares back at her, hopeless and abandoned, waiting for the axe to fall again.

It falls to the side of the bath, clattering dully.

“I will make this known to you,” the queen says, cool and still beneath the burning red splattered on her face. “I have no care for the daughter of Priam, and the fate of a slave-girl is nothing to me. But _his_ was the crime, _his_ was the defilement of our marriage, our family - and enough women have shed tears and blood for the deeds of Agamemnon.”

She turns and walks away, calling carelessly for Aigisthos.

The bloody water ripples; fingers, a hand twitching, helpless.

Kassandra reaches for the axe. It has a good, solid weight to it, a balance well-struck.

 _The third blow is the dedication to Zeus_ , her father always said.

* * *

Aigisthos kisses along the lines of her shoulder, his hands on her wide hips, and whispers into Klytaimestra's ear, “I thought you had planned to kill her as well. As changeable as any woman, aren’t you, my queen?”

“A woman is not a man,” says Klytaimestra, distant, idly playing with a lock of Aigisthos's beard, “too stubborn to see another path once he has chosen his. A wise woman looks at all ways, and chooses what is best at each time.”

“And a very wise woman you are, my little bee,” Aigisthos laughs, moving in to kiss her, “to save such a lovely creature as that girl...”

She turns her face away so that he kisses only her cheek, and says, “A wise woman does not allow a second trespass when she has punished the first.”

“As my queen commands, so do I obey,” he says, and she turns back to him with a small, pleased smile.

  
**The Trojan Women**  


Klytaimestra sets no guard or watch over Kassandra, tells no man to restrain her as she wanders the palace; she says only, “Let the other women of Ilion serve her, if they wish; and if they do not, they shall serve me, and so will she.”

All but two of the women choose the queen. Klytaimestra raises her eyebrows and does not ask.

Later, as they weave and Klytaimestra sends other servants running to prepare the evening’s meal, one of the women, with the light liquid accent of Mytilene on her tongue, speaks up, saying, “Lady, it isn’t that we don’t care for the lady Kassandra...”

“And see that there is a singer,” says Klytaimestra. “One with less interest in tales of war, this time. Oh?”

“We don’t mean to abandon her,” says the woman, Atthis, “but she’s been so strange - oh, she was before the war, too, but now it breaks your heart to listen to her, lady, even when you don’t know what she’s on about and who does know, anymore, and a body can’t bear it for too long, and when we’ve borne such a weight already -”

But another woman hushes her, and the looms thump and hum in a strained chorus.

“Thank you for your explanation, Atthis,” the queen says. “No, Eurykleia, I believe we shall save the Thracian wine; our own will suffice for tonight. See that there is a place on my left for Kassandra and her attendants.”

* * *

Aigisthos does not look at Kassandra. He stares, he watches, he gazes at her, and she flees on her lovely ankles down the halls to the same place, every time: the stained bath, now unused, a new one having been built elsewhere with the treasures of dead Ilion.

She sits on the lip of the pool and places her hands against the dark blotches on the edge; she prays with all her breath and soul that this is all, this is the completion, this alone is the blood she had seen outside the palace gate. _No more, no more, not mine, not hers - only his, I pray you, Lord Apollon of the silver bow, if ever you cared for me let his be the last blood I see upon the rocks..._

“Why do you come here?” Klytaimestra asks. She does not lean against the door-frame; Kleis and Doricha peer around her, anxious.

“I don’t want to be looked at anymore,” Kassandra whispers, and her hands shake with the force of her wish. “I don’t want to see, and I don’t want him to look at me anymore.”

“He won't,” the queen says. “Get up; we must make ourselves ready for the wedding-feast tonight.”

Kassandra hides her face in her scraped hands, afraid, knowing the queen thinks it is another him she means.

“Come, get up,” says Klytaimestra; “I swear that he will not look at you again, if I must blind him myself.”

And Kassandra looks up with widening eyes: for the first time in years she has been understood.

* * *

“I warned you to leave the girl alone,” the queen says, as she fastens on long earrings before the feast.

“And I have,” Aigisthos protests. He loves to watch her dress, choose her adornments, color her face; she rarely does so. “I haven’t touched her, not once - I’ve hardly been near enough to her to touch her.”

“Not only your hands,” says Klytaimestra, turning a choker around to inspect it for signs of wear, “but your eyes as well. I do not wish to see them wandering. If you are not satisfied with a queen, you may leave Mykenai and go back to Olympia, or to the crows.”

His face darkens and hardens into an angry mask, his pleasure in her habits vanishing. “How dare you threaten me! I am the king, you cannot speak to me so -”

She puts down the choker and turns to face him, and says coolly, “You are no king, Aigisthos, nor will you be. I am the ruler here.”

“You are nothing,” he snarls, and crosses the room in three heavy steps. He towers over her; though no true warrior, he has his cousin's build. “You are a woman, a murderess - you cannot rule, you have no right!”

“I am the daughter of Leda and Tyndareos, rulers of Sparta,” she says, her voice rising at last. “ _I_ have reigned over Mykenai for ten years, not you -”

Aigisthos grabs her shoulder as if he would shake her and shouts, “That doesn’t give you the power! Leda’s daughter - don’t make me laugh! You are no beauty, no royal princess, and you will not take this city from me now that it is mine -”

His hand is gripping her left shoulder; her right hand closes around his throat with only the lightest pressure, her hand that can wield an axe without wavering, her hand and her arm behind it that worked the loom that wove the nets that killed a king.

“I am the queen,” says Klytaimestra. “And you will leave Kassandra alone.”

* * *

It is a solemn feast that night, and a strained one, with the blessed couple barely speaking and the queen's own children absent, by choice or exile; ill-omened, the priests whisper, glancing hate at Klytaimestra. But Kassandra smiles, and speaks lightly with her women, and sings the wedding-songs as loud as any, her voice weak but joyful. All eyes but one’s are on her, and without that one’s gaze the others have no weight upon her heart.

At the end Aigisthos does not take the scepter. Klytaimestra does, and as the priests choke and protest she makes a gracious speech to grant her new husband the king's ceremonial rights and duties; “for I recognize full well,” she says, “that there are holy spaces where I would not trespass, and I do not propose to do so. And I shall be very busy with Mykenai itself; the war is over, but our lives are not, and I would see our land prosper and flourish as it has never flourished before.”

Her words do nothing to stop the angry whispers and gossip that run through the hall, but Mykenai would be a far different place if its queen had any care for whispers and gossip.

Kassandra says something soft in Doricha’s ear, and the older woman says to Klytaimestra, “Lady, I’m not sure I’m getting this right, but my mistress says that no Furies have gorged themselves at this feast, nor do they roost with stained feathers on the rafters, but they haven’t left the house entirely... I’m sorry, lady, but that’s what she said, I know it makes no sense.”

“I understand,” says Klytaimestra, and looks to Kassandra, who waits with anxious face and twisting hands. “Thank you for telling me.”

Kassandra’s smile is shy and warm as the morning sun.

  


**The Graces**  


The queen is often too busy with matters of state to handle women’s work, but when she makes time for spinning or sewing or other such tasks, Kassandra is usually there. She says little and does less, seeming content to watch the other women work, and to listen to them speak and tell stories and share the new songs that singers bring to the city. Klytaimestra sometimes asks her to fetch some small items, or to help with the looms; never large tasks, and never an order.

One day as they weave, Kassandra offers the beginning of a story; she says, in her quiet voice, “Once, when your sister was in Ilion with us, she -”

Klytaimestra is working the largest loom with an even, steady rhythm that never falters. “Let us have no talk of my sister,” she says.

Cut off so abruptly, Kassandra starts, and her drop-spindle falls to the floor, spilling the thread. “You - are you ashamed of her, of what she did? When you yourself -”

“Shamed?” says Klytaimestra. “Yes, I am shamed by her. I am shamed that she returned to Sparta like a prize, that she is content to sit by Menelaos and tell amusing little tales about their travels, that she is only a consort when she should be queen - oh, yes, how she shames me!”

In picking up the dropped thread, Kassandra has tangled it around her fingers so tightly that they have gone purple and cold. She says, “I was once proud as you; men and gods have taught me otherwise.”

Klytaimestra raises her hand and gestures: _Come, sit by me_ , and Kassandra does. Klytaimestra unwinds the thread from her hands gently, with a practiced ease. “Let us have another story,” she says, “whatever you would like.”

So Kassandra tells them a story that Andromache once told her, a silly story of nymphs and satyrs outwitting each other to a happy ending; a better story by far than any of Helen’s.

* * *

Kassandra’s position is fluid, ill-defined. She has her attendants and the freedom of the palace, unguarded, and she takes no one’s orders but the queen’s; yet her clothes are plain and serviceable, a slave’s clothes, and there is nothing that is her own.

She often brushes Klytaimestra’s hair in the evenings, a little and quiet ritual of their own. Tonight as she does so Klytaimestra sorts through jewelry, laid out on linen and glowing softly in the lamplight. One piece among the rest catches Kassandra’s eye: a golden bracelet, beaded with electrum and dented on one side.

Klytaimestra picks it up and Kassandra says, “That was my mother’s.”

“Oh?” says the queen, turning it over in her hands. “A lovely piece, indeed, and more than worthy of a queen.”

The wooden comb’s teeth bite into Kassandra’s palm. Helpless, she says again, “It was my mother’s - a gift from my aunt, her sister...”

Klytaimestra runs her fingers over the dent and says, musingly, “I am not your mother; it is not my place to give you her gifts.” She says nothing else aloud, but holds the bracelet up to catch the light better.

Kassandra reaches over her shoulder and takes it back, brings it to her face to feel the gold’s softness and the cool touch of the shimmering electrum against her skin; she remembers her mother, Hekabe proud and strong, kind and welcoming, her disappointed face ( _it is ill-done to refuse a god, child_ ) and loving eyes, and that day on the burning shore when she saw her mother weeping with the howling dog at her throat, grief too loud and long for human voice, and her fall to the sea...

“It is mine,” she whispers, her voice bound and struggling with tears, “mine from my mother,” and Klytaimestra says “Yes,” and kisses her cheeks softly.

Then she kisses Kassandra’s lips and Kassandra’s heart contracts, withdraws; her legs shake and the warm colors of her face drain away. Klytaimestra pulls back, but her eyes are focused on Kassandra as she says, “I imagine it takes a certain kind of woman to deny the Lord Apollon - but if I've erred...”

Kassandra turns her face aside, her eyes downcast; “No,” she says, “you have not erred, only I - I am afraid, still.”

Klytaimestra touches her shoulder softly, and then turns away, back to the jewels on the linen. There is nothing in her voice when she says, “I should hope that you have no cause to fear me any longer; I intend nothing against your will.”

Kassandra slips her mother’s bracelet onto her arm (it tries to slide off again; she does not have Hekabe’s large bones and generous build) and, barely breathing, she leans against the queen’s back.

“I do not fear you,” she says.

* * *

“Elektra, do come out,” Klytaimestra says, standing outside the entrance to her daughter’s room and looking down her nose at the apologetic guards. “You haven’t left your room in months, you cannot stay there forever.”

“I can too!” yells a girl from somewhere within. “I’m never coming out! I know what you did! You only want me to come out so you can kill me, too, but I won’t!”

“Really, Elektra!” Klytaimestra looks over at Kassandra with embarrassed exasperation, and says to her, “She always was closer to her father as a little girl, not like -”

But she cuts off there, biting her lips together, and says sharply, “I would never do such a thing, Elektra; you are my daughter, my own blood, and precious to me. Please come out of your room, let me see you.”

“I’ll never come out, _never_! Not while that bastard Aigisthos is here!”

If Elektra ever came out, she would have realized how little Aigisthos is in the palace these days; his relations with his wife are not precisely cool, but he spends much of his time away from Mykenai, hunting or traveling to bring back reports of the land to Klytaimestra, and he no longer shares her bed when he is home. The queen’s rule is never entirely smooth, but it is smoother for his absence.

Klytaimestra makes a small, annoyed sound. “Elektra, I've had enough of this foolishness. I expect to see you at dinner tonight, and without any further excuses.” She turns to go and says to Kassandra, “Perhaps you will have more luck talking to her - but I would advise you,” and her voice is brittle and edged, “not to speak too much of your own - experiences - with her father.”

Once she is out of earshot, the guards following her, Kassandra approaches the door and says softly, “Hello...”

“Go _away_ , you Troian slut!”

Kassandra hears the beating of bronze-edged wings and winces. “I know you’re very angry, still,” she says, “but your mother is only worried about you...”

“I don’t care if she is!” Elektra shouts. “And I don’t care if you are, either! I don’t have to listen to you, you’re just a slave, you’re nothing - you should’ve just died when he did, I wish you had!”

Kassandra leans against the door and says, “I don’t, anymore.”

Silence from the other side.

“All the way -” she cannot say _home_ , even if she thinks it now, sometimes, “- all the way here, I saw my death waiting, a bloodstained net, and I longed for it. How beautiful the realm of Haides seemed to me then, that realm where there is no speech -”

(his voice with its broad accent, “You’ve been had once, what’s the use of fighting now?”)

“- no lust -”

(he did not care if she cried, if she bled, if she was purple with bruises or sick with the sea’s movement)

“- no war -”

(o my people, the gods turned their backs to us, and I could not warn you with Apollon’s hand on my throat)

“- only the quiet shades. And when I thought of that peace, I desired it with all my heart, and I would have thrown myself over the side of the ship, if I could have; but I was not allowed such a chance.”

Her hands are shaking again. She wishes for Klytaimestra, but there are some stories she must tell alone. “Even so, I knew there was death yet to come, and I thought it waited for me...”

“But it didn’t,” says Elektra; her voice is closer to the door than it was, and subdued.

“It didn’t,” Kassandra agrees. “The queen spared me.”

“She’s still horrible,” Elektra says, with little force behind it. “She shouldn’t have killed my f-father...”

 _Nor Neoptolemos mine_ , but what use is it to bring up that pain now? “Perhaps not,” Kassandra says. “But she’s not going to hurt you; she’s only worried... Will you come out?”

Silence again; then the door creaks open an inch, and Elektra looks through.

* * *

They lie together in the queen’s bed, tangled and comfortably uncomfortable in a lovely silence that Klytaimestra breaks by saying, “I'm glad that you have become such friends with Elektra -” which is true enough; though still wary of her mother, the girl is entranced with Kassandra, constantly begging for stories of Helen and of Troia before the war, “- but I shall be jealous before much longer.”

Kassandra knows better than to take Klytaimestra’s jealously lightly, even if she does not fear it. She nestles into the queen’s shoulder and says, “I am only yours, dearest, and ever will be.”

“Hm,” says Klytaimestra, but she does not sound displeased, and the silence is comfortable again. Kassandra runs her fingers over the line of Klytaimestra’s arm and side, every inch of it loved: a cluster of moles on her shoulder, the little wrinkles around her breasts, a thin scar from a broken vase, the long dark lines of old stretchmarks on her hips and belly... “Children,” Klytaimestra says; “I have loved mine, but they are hard on the body.”

Kassandra shifts to kiss one of them, and says without bitterness, “I will never bear these marks...”

Klytaimestra runs her fingers through Kassandra’s hair, plays with the edge of her earlobe. “Don't mourn their lack overmuch,” she says dryly; then her fingers wander to caress Kassandra's lips, a softer touch than Agamemnon could have imagined, and in the pleasing distractions of love-making Kassandra forgets the dream she had meant to speak of, the dream of the hatching and venomous snake.

But it is the Graces who rule the palace, now, rather than the unkind Kindly Ones; surely the warnings of Apollon no longer have a place here.

  


**Orestes**  


“Oh Orestes you’re _home_!”

It takes a moment for Orestes to get his breath back after Elektra’s enthusiastic hug, and she takes it as license to continue. “I’ve been asking and asking Mother to let you come back already and she won’t ever listen, but she can’t do anything if you’re already home - and she’ll be so pleased to see you now that you’re here, I know it! Let’s go see her right now - oh, and you must meet Kassandra, she’s so lovely and kind and ever so much better than that stupid Aigisthos. And Mother really will be glad to see you, she doesn’t say anything but I know she’s missed you awfully -”

“Right, but -” Orestes says, stalling. “I - I thought it might be good to sort of - surprise her.”

Elektra blinks, then lights up. “What a perfectly wonderful idea! Oh, and I know just how to do it, leave it to me - you can come up and ask for guest-right and pretend to be strangers, and it’s been so long Mother surely won’t realize it’s you if you just pretend a little, and then at dinner I’ll say, ‘Oh, if only my dear brother were here,’ and you’ll say, ‘You had a brother? I had a sister, once...’ and I’ll say, ‘Yes, I had the most wonderful brother, he had curly hair just like mine,’ and you’ll say, ‘How funny, my hair looks just like yours, too,’ and -”

She chatters on and on, pleased with her own genius; Pylades is grinning behind his hand, and Orestes wonders how he can possibly tell his sister what he’s come home to do.

* * *

They get in easily enough, with only a brief second glance from Klytaimestra, but dinner nearly sends all their plans to ruin; for Kassandra walks in on the queen’s arm, and when she sets eyes on Orestes she screams, crying _no_ over and over again.

Klytaimestra tries to quiet her, but Kassandra cannot be silenced, and words pour from her mouth as serpents from eggs, bloody and ominous without meaning behind them. Elektra jumps up and glares at Orestes - “Oh, you mean thing!” she snaps, as Orestes mouths _But what did I do?_ \- and runs to Kassandra’s side to fuss, helping her leave the hall; Klytaimestra makes some apology to her guests and leaves them to dine with the ministers and landowners.

“You know,” Pylades says, “she may be a little crazy, but your mother’s friend is really hot.”

“Shut up,” says Orestes.

* * *

In their room Klytaimestra has no need of a polite mask, and her concern shows in every line of her face. She strokes Kassandra’s hair, kisses her, hums the songs she once sang over her children as they fell asleep, but nothing calms the prophetess reawakened; “Please, Kassandra, I can't understand you,” a new and fearful feeling.

Kassandra is frantic to make herself understood, gesturing as she speaks, but her words are strange and distorted: Furies with bronze greaves and bloody eyes, a snake suckling at its mother's breast, and death, death, death like a rushing flood...

“Ssh, ssh, be calm,” Klytaimestra says, “I won't let anyone harm you, ssh, you’re safe...”

“You still lie like a dog, don’t you?” says a shadow at the door, and Klytaimestra turns to face her son.

How clever he must think himself, to disguise his voice with an accent, to think that years could change him to a stranger. The queen says, “I'd hoped you might have better manners than this, Orestes.”

“Manners,” he spits, “what do manners mean to a murderous bitch like you? I’ve come for justice for my father, not manners.” His sword is drawn already, raised to strike, and Klytaimestra calls out for the guards.

“Don’t bother,” Orestes says. “There’s no one here who would raise a hand to save something like you.”

Kassandra throws her arms around Klytaimestra, tears running down her face, and Klytaimestra says, as calmly as if she faced death every day, “Now look what you’ve done; you've made Kassandra cry.” And she strokes Kassandra’s hair, black threaded with silver now, and murmurs to her again, “Ssh, don’t be afraid...”

And what a fool Orestes feels then. He looks at his sword, still innocent of blood; what was he planning to do with it? Rescue a sister who needs no rescue, avenge a father he barely remembers, kill two women for the deeds of one...

Suddenly sick, he throws it aside, and hates the savage clattering that it makes.

Klytaimestra raises herself up, pulling Kassandra with her gently; Kassandra stares around her, wide-eyed, but there is no flash of bronze or ivory fangs, no bloody purple shrouds.

Klytaimestra wipes away the tears from Kassandra’s cheeks, and reaching her hand out to Orestes says to him, “Welcome home, son.”

  


**Epilogou**  


Somewhere else, Athene says, “Well, shit. Now how I am going to get the law-courts set up in Athenai?”

Zeus is distracted, feeding Ganymedes ambrosia while the two of them giggle like children, and says only, “Oh, just tell them it went the other way; they’ll never know the difference.”

“Damn Troians always ruin everything,” Athene mutters.


End file.
